Typhoid

“Look at this woman. This child. This temptress. This angel. A child torn. You can’t take your eyes off her, you can’t ignore her. You feel you’ve met her before. You’ve known her or wish to God you had. This woman is on fire, and the fire even has a name — Typhoid.”

Context

Typhoid is one of the most distinctive and complex Daredevil characters. She was created by Ann Nocenti in 1988.

This profile covers Typhoid’s appearances from the beginning up to the Typhoid Limited Series in 1995.

Since she’s a signature Nocenti character and closely tied to her favourite themes — explored by few other super-hero comics writers — we won’t cover non-Nocenti-penned appearances in this profile. Which is already enormous enough, anyway.

Base Of Operations: Usually New York City – formerly a series of psychiatric hospitals, Chicago and Mobile around the New York state. When this profile ends Walker lives in a small house in upstate New York.

Height: 5’10” Weight: 140 lbs.

Eyes: Almond-green Hair: Reddish brown

Powers and Abilities

Typhoid has exceptional strength, speed, agility, stamina and reflexes. She is a formidable hand-to-hand combatant. She is also a master with bladed weapons – especially razors, machetes and knives (the later wielded or thrown), though she occasionally wields Japanese blades (tanto, wakizashi or katana).

She has demonstrated adept marksmanship with various thrown blades and even with bows, though I would assume her telekinesis plays a role in her accuracy with projectiles. She seems indifferent between dual-wielding and just having one weapon drawn. Her unarmed blows are strong enough to behead a stone statue (in DC Heroes terms, Martial Artist).

Psionics

Typhoid also has an array of subtle psionic abilities – she is telepathic, pyrokinetic and telekinetic. Though her power level is initially very low by superhuman standards, she is adept at using her psionics in subtle and confusing ways and later gets considerably more powerful.

Given her taste for blades, she will often use her TK on knives (making them spin, leap, fly, etc.). She can make blades strike with as much power as if she held them and with excellent accuracy – this is also a good Force manoeuvre when she does vanilla Intimidation rather than the seduction/confusion/fascination trick described in the “Sultry as Sin” section.

Her telekinetic abilities, and especially the pyrokinetic ones, are more tied to her emotions than to her intellect. When she is excited, sexually aroused, angry or otherwise experience heated emotions, poltergeist effects are likely to be subconsciously triggered with random small items around her catching fire and/or starting to spin or levitate.

Pyrokinesis is strongly associated with the Typhoid persona.

Typhoid’s telepathic abilities are generally limited to subtle influence and manipulation – see the game stats for more. However, she can have more direct and forceful effects (such as Control or Sleep) on weaker minds.

Generally, Typhoid’s initial psionics were best considered in a ’horror movie‘ frame of mind rather than in a ’super-villain’ context. They later acquired a more comic-book-like level of power.

The general theme to her powers is that she is on top and in control. Her telekinesis manifests as her mentally giving orders to items to perform certain actions (“Burn”, “Spin”, “Towel – come to me”, etc.)

Other assets

Both Mary and Typhoid have an extraordinary presence. Typhoid is real unsettling and scary, and Mary is nearly irresistible even when not playing a special role and just being her usual femme-enfant self. This irresistibleness is also usually backed by Typhoid’s telepathy.

Both will powerfully get under everybody’s skin and trigger all sorts of strong emotions and questions in record time. Typhoid is a powerful psychic acid and Mary is the equivalent of strong psychic happy juice – and both are exceptionally attractive women and extremely desirable.

Her IQ is also unusually high, and she does demonstrate significant resourcefulness.

Typhoid is able to defeat superhuman senses, though it’s not clear how she does it. Daredevil can barely perceive her even through his arsenal of highly enhanced senses, and even Wolverine cannot track her by scent. She also managed to occasionally sail right through Peter Parker’s Spider-Sense.

Abilities specific to the 2 later personas

The Bloody persona is strongly associated with telekinesis – she can manipulate heavy objects and fly them at high speeds with her mind. She uses this ability a lot when fighting superhumans. Whereas Typhoid is an agile and quick fighter wielding blades, Bloody is a very strong, tough soldier wielding big guns, hitting like a truck and being largely immune to pain.

Even unarmed, Bloody is even more dangerous in a fight than Typhoid, and will telekinetically cover herself in makeshift armour.

Walker is a competent private dick, but she is much more ordinary than her insane personalities and has no special physical or social abilities. She seems to have some sort of low-level telepathy, though, reminiscent in power level of the early pyrokine and telekine abilities of Typhoid.

History

A famous case in the annals of psychiatry, Mary’s impossibly fragmented personality was discovered during her infancy. She spent most of her childhood and adolescence in psychiatric institutions. Her ’Mary” persona is fragile, sickly, prone to epilepsy and other disorders. Mary grew up as a sweet, cooperative, sensitive girl.

Her other persona, named ’Typhoid” since she is running a constant fever, is unapproachable, uncontrollable, murderous. She does not display any epileptic symptoms and is in fact exceptionally strong and vital. She consistently refused and violently rejected all forms of help, occasionally complaining that she was ’hot in the brain’.

Typhoid collaborated but once for psionic activity testing. She tested a strong positive for telekinetic ability, training herself to mentally move small objects. Mary displayed no psionic abilities whatsoever. In fact reads as a completely normal person on all known tests for mutant, mutate or otherwise superhuman abilities. Which should be impossible.

One of the most famous aspects of the Mary case is that the 2 personae have completely different heart rates, alpha waves, EEG patterns, bio-rythms, body odour, hair texture, etc. This, too, is impossible in any normal human being. Even such incredibly acute senses as Daredevil’s are unable to tell Typhoid and Mary are physically the same person.

The facial expressions, body language and attitude, voice, diction, etc. are also markedly different from one personality to the next. Any person familiar with her will instantly realises who she is now when she shifts. The simplest clue is how her hair changes, apparently from subtle application of telekinesis.

People not familiar with her can easily believe that the personalities are different girls who happen to look somewhat alike, perhaps as sisters would.

Fire, walk with me

There have been various fuzzy hints as to Mary’s past, most of which seem fictional.

She may have developed a split personality in utero not to hear the screams of her parents. She may have been raped by a man at some early point, strengthening the Typhoid (and later Bloody) persona. Or it may have been more general torture performed by one of her doctors when she was a child to punish her for being Typhoid.

She may have been warped by a charismatic, psychotic old woman telling her in an asylum how fairy tales were all wrong and real life was horrible and she was going to suffer terribly until she died and then went to Hell.

She may have been a research subject in some unknown experimental protocol. She may have received psychic surgery or psi-drugs. She may have been (or been intended to be) a superhuman field operative for an undisclosed organisation – she told Deadpool she had been manufactured and that she was “somebody else’s fault”.

It is possible that the Typhoid persona was developed while still in the crib as a defence against violently dysfunctional parents beating her.

She once said during her ’Lyla‘ phase (provided she ever was Lyla, see below) that she was 19, had grown up somewhere in New Mexico, and was a runaway fleeing a father who forced her to have sex with him. She had come to New York City since she wanted to become a dancer or an actress, and ended up working at “Babe’s”, a brothel.

None of the fuzzy hints above is terribly likely to be true. Most if not all of them are likely to have been misdirection or neurotic self-reinvention on her part. It is in fact entirely possibly she does not remember anything, or genuinely remembers multiple and contradictory pasts.

In any case there are clear examples of Typhoid making up biographies for herself in order to manipulate people, further hinting that most of the biographical elements above are suspect.

That she was the result of a program descended from CIA’s project MKULTRA is not impossible. She was familiar with the location of some of their laboratories and with the content of some of their brainwashing videos.

Perhaps she was experimented upon as a little girl by this clandestine project, fled and ended up in the public psychiatry system. On the other hand it could easily be a neurotic attempt at finding an explanation about her catastrophic issues.

Still, the MKULTRA-successor-project lead is the one with the most corroborating facts, and thus the most serious one by far. During a more recent encounter with the scientists at the lab which had supposedly turned her into what she is, they joked about previous subjects of the MKULTRA days, supposedly including Oswald and Ruby . These were probably private jokes though.

If the brainwashing and psionic experimentation program is indeed a key part of Typhoid’s past, it is possible that it has ties to the Weapon X program – or the greater Weapon Plus program. Wolverine seemed to find some aspects of it familiar.

For more information about the project suspected to be responsible for Typhoid, and related projects, see the Steel Raven profile.

Fragmented past

What is better established is that during her late teenage years, the physically adept Typhoid escaped. A year later, Mary was located – as an extremely successful young stage actress. Mary was regarded in awe by off-Broadway theatre professionals and critics, and generally seen as destined to become of one of the greatest actresses of the XXth century.

However, she suddenly disappeared. Typhoid likely reasserted herself and ruined Mary’s life.

It is possible but unlikely that, early during her acting career, Mary was a prostitute named Lyla, perhaps as a phase of the sexually voracious Typhoid. One night a young Matt Murdock, looking to avenge his father, attacked criminals in the brothel where Lyla worked.

In the panic, several of the girls attacked him, mistakenly thinking he was an undercover police officer. In the confusion Murdock lashed out and Lyla, hit by a powerful kick, was defenestrated. Typhoid claims that she survived the fall, and that this is the point where she decided never to trust a man again.

While the brawl and Lyla’s fall are established to have actually happened, there is considerable doubt as to whether Lyla and Mary were the same person. In particular prostitutes working at the same brothel later clearly stated that Lyla had been killed by the fall and her body scraped off the sidewalk by the police.

All told, this story was likely a psychotic construction intended to allow her to shift the blame for her issues on Daredevil and to free herself of her complex feelings toward him by deciding that he, too, was a murderer.

A better established datum is that, some time after giving up her stage actress career as Mary, she reappeared in Chicago as Typhoid. There she launched a career of robbery and blackmail and gradually developed a costume and style as a sort of supervillainess, building up her physical and psychic power.

From there she eventually moved to New York City, intending to take over the town.

First we take Manhattan

Vamping a handsome and violent criminal, she teamed up with him to hit a number of operations. She killed most everyone in her path and took over – which led to some local journalists mistaking her for a vigilante.

This quickly raised the ire of the Kingpin, to whom most of the damaged operations belonged. He learned about her, and soon realised she was pretty much the ultimate weapon he could use to utterly destroy Matt Murdock.

The Kingpin manipulated her into invading his headquarters. Though she easily bypassed all security using her psychic powers, the Kingpin’s superior physical and mental might gave her pause. He offered Typhoid a million dollars to make Matt Murdock/Daredevil fall in love with her, then break his heart as badly as she could and leave him devastated.

Amused, Typhoid took the contract, commenting she would have done it for free since it looked like fun.

A large part of the Kingpin’s motivation for this contract likely was payback for Daredevil’s intervention in the life of the Kingpin’s beloved wife, Vanessa. Given later events, it is likely that Typhoid intended to work with the Kingpin until she knew what his weak points were and would turn against him when she grew bored of him.

Fisk almost certainly anticipated this, but was inevitably and gradually seduced by Typhoid.

Heartbreaker

Typhoid used her ability to influence Mary to have her approach Matt Murdock, playing a role Typhoid had crafted for her – a young, passionate aide and educator for blind people. With the Typhoid persona riding shotgun, the exceptionally attractive Mary gave a powerful performance that led to Murdock falling in love with her within minutes.

She very nearly drew him into cheating on Karen Page, his then-girlfriend. She once bewitched Murdock into a passionate and silent kiss while Karen was trying to reach him on the phone. She kissed him again in the following day and he found himself unable to coherently resist.

At the same time, the Kingpin let a brief moment of irritation betray that he, too, was getting strongly attracted toward Typhoid.

Typhoid then confronted DD again, and nearly drowned him in a sewer. However, Mary took over to prevent Typhoid from killing Murdock, whom she was naïvely in love with, before running away in confusion.

But by that point Typhoid had already inflicted severe damage to Murdock’s relationship with Page, and had her fingers in Fisk’s heart despite his mourning of his wife.

Mary reasserted herself for several days, delaying the Kingpin’s and Typhoid’s plans, daydreaming about Murdock and resuming some creative activities – until Typhoid took over. Despite the interference of Mary, her plan was humming along perfectly.

In the span of a few hours, the Kingpin gave in to his attraction and had sex with Typhoid, and Murdock was explaining to a Typhoid-controlled Mary that he needed some time to tell Karen about Mary and break their relationship.

Killing the devil

However, the Kingpin grew possessive of Typhoid and jealous of Murdock. He now wanted her to break him now and come back to him. Typhoid found this difficult, since Mary was in love with Murdock, which increasingly gave her the power to resist Typhoid.

The psychotic Typhoid grew afraid that Mary could eventually become so strong as to lock her away forever. She also became jealous of Mary, wanting the attractive Murdock for herself.

Trying to find a way out of this and knowing she was probably physically outmatched in a fight to the death with Daredevil, Typhoid accessed the Kingpin’s files. She contacted current enemies of Daredevil – Bullet, Ammo, Bushwacker and the Wild Boys – killing a dozen corrections and police officers to bust them out of jail when needed.

Daredevil was hammered by the gauntlet of villains and left in an awful state with serious wounds, a concussion and in a state of delirium.

Typhoid then came to administer the killing blow and drop him off a bridge. This proved difficult. As Mary was falling in love with Murdock, Typhoid had fallen in love with Daredevil and was unable to cope with those feelings. She nevertheless forced herself to hurl him off the bridge, though in a sloppy manner and without having the courage to check her kill.

Crime in the city

With Daredevil apparently dead, the Kingpin was furious – he had hired Typhoid to break Murdock’s heart, not kill him. He started beating Typhoid up, which she interpreted as foreplay and a game of domination.

This attitude was self-fulfilling, and led the Kingpin to turn the violence to sex. Based on this, Typhoid knew that she would eventually emerge as the strongest of the odd couple they now formed.

Mary, sensing that she had done something extremely bad, attempted to commit suicide, but Typhoid was too strong. Howbeit, since Mary was subconsciously orbiting around the spot where Daredevil had been dropped to his apparent death, Typhoid came to realise the hero was still alive.

However, Typhoid was distracted in some unclear way by the Inferno events. This slip allowed Mary to call an ambulance and save Murdock’s life. As she left Mary ran into Karen Page, who soon guessed what was going on. Heartbroken, Page broke up with Murdock.

Meanwhile Typhoid had seemingly become an independent entity and a sort of demon lord. She wore garb reminiscent of Magik in her Darkchylde persona, and laying claim to the Kingpin’s soul for all the sins he had committed.

Typhoid and Mary’s adventures during the Inferno crisis are unrevealed. They eventually reintegrated and Typhoid seemingly lost the demonic appearance, agenda and affiliations.

Typhoid was next seen on a mercenary mission for Dr. Doom, who hired her to steal alien technological secrets from the Power family. As it turned out she didn’t really execute on the mission and just played psychological games with the Power Pack kids. Her actual goal was to spend time discussing with Doom and determining what his psychological buttons were, just for kicks.

Typhoid managed to have Doom briefly talk about his relationship with his father, and then left the furious monarch, pleased with herself.

Welcome home (sanatorium)

Typhoid continued to be the Kingpin’s mistress, bodyguard, enforcer and special agent for some months. However, Bullseye returned to reclaim his position as Kingpin’s special guy. As it turned out the Kingpin’s organisation was clashing with agents of the Red Skull in New York at the same time.

This led to Typhoid nearly putting a knife through Crossbones’s eye when he attempted to kill the Kingpin (he was saved by Daredevil). She was then instructed to contact Bullseye — whom the Kingpin considered to be expendable, unlike Typhoid — for a counter-hit on the Red Skull.

The Kingpin mostly intended this as a diversion, though, and eventually solved the issue by winning a martial arts duel against the Red Skull.

Typhoid’s alliance with Fisk ended when Daredevil went on the offensive against the Kingpin. The vigilante’s full-spectrum assault started with the neutralisation of Typhoid.

DD left Fisk a memento reminding the Kingpin of his wife Vanessa, making the Kingpin bluesy and leading the jealous Typhoid to throw a hissy fit. Daredevil tracked her down after she left, confronted her as she was intimidating a Mafia crew, then attacked.

His plan was simple and devastating – he grabbed Typhoid and kissed her. He did not leave her a chance to assert herself. This plunged her into neurotic confusion as she couldn’t bear not being the dominant one and was forced to confront her attraction toward Daredevil. This in turn made Mary successfully fight her to be on top and be with Murdock.

Matt and Mary spend the night together in a motel and Daredevil left early in the morning. He called in social services and used forged involuntary psychiatric commitment papers to have Mary committed. The helpless and crying Mary was easily committed by psychiatric orderlies, Typhoid being unable to take over since Mary’s emotions were too strong.

Though this victory came at a heavy emotional cost for Murdock, Typhoid was now out of the game, neutralised by her own weapons and held in psychiatric care.

During her stay at the psychiatric hospital, Typhoid manipulated Mary so that she wouldn’t swallow the pills. She faked it then discreetly spit them out to build up strength.

(Can’t keep a) Good girl down

Mary eventually found herself free thanks to Typhoid’s influence, but a psychopathic assassin called Roberts heard rumours about her.

Roberts became convinced that Typhoid and Logan were assassins programmed by a top secret CIA project. He claimed that this project had also turned him into a professional government killer receiving instructions through voices in his head. Finding Logan, he asked him to locate Mary and as much information about “the project” as possible.

Realising that he could easily have been somebody just like Roberts, Wolverine decided to help him and found Mary. Knowing that large chunks of her life were missing and that she was doing weird things when she wasn’t herself, Mary decided to help Logan in the hope of learning more about herself.

She also remembered some things in her past that might be tied to “the project” Roberts was raving about.

As they allied, Logan inevitably fell in love with Mary.

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As they investigated the secret lab Mary dimly remembered about, Logan found videos about brainwashing techniques. Mary found a number of caged lab kitties and bunnies to bring home. However, as Logan examined the videos, Mary reverted to her Typhoid persona – and Typhoid wanted Wolverine to be hers.

Riding Wolverine

Assuming that Typhoid was an implanted personality Woverine repulsed her, but Typhoid just angrily set him on fire and left. Exploiting the information they found to locate and invade other research sites, Typhoid started manipulating Wolverine.

She implied that Roberts’s tales were true and that both she and Wolverine were just like him – victims of horrible projects to create insane assassins.

Typhoid kept playing with Wolverine. She again set him on fire and blinded him. She fought him for a bit then reverted to a very confused Mary when Wolverine healed enough to start gaining the upper hand. Eventually, Mary used the information Logan gathered to blackmail the project’s head scientist into doing some psychic surgery on her and destroy the Typhoid persona.

This decision, as well as other moments where she behaved in a way not matching the known Mary persona, are likely a hint that a third personality was emerging – Walker.

Mary’s plan would have failed, with the cruel scientist operating on her killing her, but for Logan’s intervention. Having a psychotic episode, Typhoid proceeded to kill everybody present until Wolverine briefly managed to make her Mary again. This faded and Typhoid resumed control, then fled.

What little she remembered about meeting Logan comforted Mary, and she remained on top for several consecutive weeks. She may have been time-sharing with the emerging Walker personality, though.

While the Typhoid personality was “at the bottom”, it was contacted by a demon of dreams and insanity called Dusk. It offered to ’cure‘ her if she could procure the soul of the Ghost Rider (Dan Ketch). Typhoid agreed and steered Mary toward the right area.

Riders on the storm

Thus, Mary was strolling down a random everyday mall in girly pink clothes and a white hat when she ’randomly‘ met Daniel Ketch. Troubled and attracted by the handsome biker, Mary felt she was losing control and was t/h-aunted by Typhoid in the ladies’s washroom mirror.

After Typhoid killed several demonically-influenced security guards attempting to rape Mary, the Rider intervened and attempted to punish Typhoid. However he ended up shedding the blood of Mary, the quintessential innocent.

As the Ghost Rider’s mystical senses were going crazy trying to deal with somebody who was at once very much guilty and entirely innocent, the mall they were in shifted to Dusk’s dimension.

While there, Typhoid confronted Dusk as she realised the demon had no intention to help her. Refusing to be dominated by Dusk, Typhoid threw herself to her death while in Dusk’s realm. When she came back to the real world, she was shocked by her exposure to raw madness and death in the demonic dimension.

She sneaked back into her old room in the psychiatric hospital she had previously fled, consuming part of the stash of pills she had previously spit out and hidden. This helped her deal with her recent paranormal experiences.

Typhoid briefly fled from the asylum and had a “relationship” with a judge before a pair of doctors found her and took her back to the institution. However, while she was outside Typhoid had also seduced her physician, Dr. Hunt, and had convinced him to “cure” Mary in a way that would leave Typhoid alone in power.

At this point, the psychiatric team clearly determined that a fourth personality was emerging (though, being unaware of the nascent Walker, they considered her to be the third).

On a mission for Professor X and looking for the perfect infiltrator, Wolverine came to recruit Typhoid and Mary. Though Mary asked him to kill her to destroy Typhoid, he refused and warned her about the true intentions of Dr. Hunt and Typhoid’s plan.

Mary and Typhoid both chose to collaborate with Wolverine, since the mission was to infiltrate a hidden base called the Fortress. This place was similar to the Weapon X project that had created Wolverine or the MKULTRA-derived project which is thought to have created Typhoid.

Sex crimes

Though the infiltration went fine, Typhoid got overconfident and failed while escaping with the mutant test subject she had been sent to recover. The mutant – an empathic/telepathic teenaged girl called Jessie – broadcast her rescuers thoughts in the hope of bringing in reinforcements.

Since Typhoid had reverted to being Mary, a telepathic cry for help was sent to Daredevil, Wolverine, and Ghost Rider, the three strongest men with whom Mary had fallen in love.

As it turned out, outside help was unnecessary. Though her ability to become Typhoid had seemingly been blocked, Mary was taken over by another personality, which the shocked teenager called “Bloody Mary” after she slaughtered the male guards and scientists who had captured her, leaving the females wounded and unconscious but alive.

Bloody had Mary take Jessie to a shelter for abused women, where she was told that Jessie was actually a boy. Furious, she hit him then stormed off after stealing from the shelter a dozen files documenting cases of abuse.

As Daredevil, Wolverine and Vengeance (who had received the telepathic call for help intended for the Ghost Rider) tracked her down, Bloody hunted down the male abusers in the files, submitting them to an amplified version of the violent treatments they were accused of and gunning down any interfering male.

Since she made her goal clear by leaving the abuse dossier near every guy she killed or tortured, her rampage soon made it to the news, with some people (especially women who had been through bad experiences) cheering her brutal brand of vigilante justice. Wolverine briefly managed to catch Bloody, but Bloody and her ally Steel Raven beat him back.

Jessie then found Bloody again, and explained hat he considered himself to be a girl in a boy’s body, confusing the sexist vigilante. Jessie attempted to heal Bloody, Typhoid and Mary using her empathic powers, and succeeded in having the third personality, which had been slowly developing, mature.

Walker, a relatively sane persona, had Dr. Hunt arrested then left the asylum with Jessie in tow.

Watching the detectives

Something apparently went wrong, though – under unrevealed circumstances Walker was separated from Jessie, and Bloody and later Typhoid reasserted themselves. Bloody resumed her rampage (based on police files about abused women), though after she slaughtered several men she switched to being Mary.

The police largely ignored Mary when it became obvious she was useless as a witness. However, when Peter Parker came to take photos of the gory crime scene he noticed her and she latched to him.

Working the usual Mary magic, she soon convinced Parker to take care of her andto invite her home. Not having taken her meds for days, Mary started spending most of her time as either Bloody or Typhoid. She clashed with Spider-Man who tried to understand and stop her erratic agenda.

Things worsened when Bloody found an old paper article by J.J. Jameson claiming that Spider-Man had murdered Gwen Stacy. Thankfully Walker got on top of Bloody during a fight with Spider-Man and turned herself in, hoping to get treatment so the other personas would be back under control.

Walker’s plan largely worked – with therapy and medication, she managed to bring the other three personalities under her partial control and, to an extent, to be the boss. She was transferred from the psychiatric hospital to a halfway house.

Being driven toward justice, in particular in cases of child abuse and women abuse, Walker established herself as a PI – or, as was once incorrectly put, “Mary Walker, schizophrenic detective for hire”.

Two rich young dilettantes with ambitions of cinema auteurship learned about her – one being a friend of Dr. Hunt, who had given him clinical observation tapes featuring Mary, Typhoid and Bloody. As they planned an experimental film about why killers kill, starring Typhoid, Walker left for New York City after learning that the daughter of her neighbour had been killed by a serial murderer who had already killed four other prostitutes.

As Walker started investigating, she let Typhoid out to pass herself as a new prostitute and do legwork among streetwalkers. Walker did not manage to stop Bloody from emerging a few times, though, since Bloody was too angry about the serial killer.

Walker and the other three sides of her managed to determine that there were actually several killers and that the police were covering for those. However, she was kidnapped by the would-be filmmakers just as she was about to get one of the killers, resulting in one more murder.

Despite the restraints and psychological torture of the ’movie‘, Typhoid managed to escape and all the killers ended up dead or behind bars. By the end of that case, the various personalities showed some odd signs of reintegrating.

Description

Stuff tends to catch fire and burn around Mary whenever she’s excited. Her hair seems to go from Mary (straight hair) to Typhoid (dreadlocks) by itself – I assume it’s Typhoid using or relaxing a telekinetic influence on her own hair to braid them all at once.

When she becomes Bloody, her hair stands up in an unlikely geyser on her head – they are likely held up telekinetically. Typhoid is permanently feverish and sweating, though she doesn’t smell of sweat due to her whacked body chemistry.

As noted, though there is no physical mutation per se between the personas, the changes affect the autonomous nervous functions (such as heartbeat or hormonal secretion). Mary and Typhoid even have markedly different voice — Mary has a normal voice whilst Typhoid’s voice is deeper and exceptionally warm and sensual, with a tinge of cruelty and sounding almost succubus-like.

Typhoid often arranges for Mary to wear her current choice of underwear without realising it — this way when Typhoid gets on top she can just shred Mary’s clothes and start operating in whatever combination of corset, stockings, leather thong, etc. she wears as her Typhoid “costume”.

When Typhoid takes over, it occasionally seems that she can make the left half of her face go white without pigments – how she does it is unknown. Bloody seems able to do the same, hinting at a telekinetic manipulation.

Personality

As Typhoid

Typhoid is intense, horny, feverish and out to have fun, with very strong sexual and murderous overtones.

She’s very strong, in control, and the world is just there as a canvas for her impulses. She grabs attractive and violent men, then throws them away when she is bored, and treats everything else as obstacles to be swept away through violence and/or her psychic powers. Her pyrokine abilities match her fiery temper and general hotness very well, and she semi-unconsciously sets fire to small objects with her mind when she is excited.

Typhoid is a powerful thrillseeker – she’s after risk and excitement no matter what the cost, and is very confident in her ability to escape from any trouble her lusts drives her into. In order to get into said trouble and to meet other powerful and passionate people, she seeks criminal power – but her main drive and core approach toward power is sexual. She simply has to dominate everything.

Typhoid has a very powerful personality, and is exceptionally attractive on multiple levels. People will want to spend time with her, and will often be averse toward attacking her ; many will also feel a level of fear toward her unpredictability. Her vocabulary tends to evoke issues of sex, attraction, control and power.

She strongly defines herself as not normal, not boring and not mundane – and that includes defining herself as being evil in order to reject normalcy and its tepid morals. This rejection of normalcy largely stems from her violent refusal of performing traditional female roles and conforming to social expectations of womanhood – and thus she assumes a physically dominant, violent demeanour with aggressive displays of sexuality and a domineering, irresponsible, unempathic, impulsive, freewheeling behaviour. She also rejects religion.

Typhoid has a serious problem with men – a complex love/hate relationship. She can only tolerate them when they are under her control, or too weak compared to her to pose a serious threat of hurting her. Men strong enough to hurt her have to be broken and controlled, preferably in a way that demonstrates they were weak, double-talking, exploitative bastards all along.

She will toy with men she wants and seem to be in total control, often hurting them physically and emotionally. However, she can be remarkably fragile despite her apparent domination if her own weapons of manipulation and emotional onslaught are used against her.

Typhoid has a strong interest in sexualised power games ; this is particularly true when she encounters male control freaks and males with a domineering personality. If Typhoid knows she is tougher than the person in question, she will often have fun by briefly pretending to be some over-the-top submissive nymphomaniac straight from some really bad BDSM porn, then knocking out (or in some cases killing) the person.

Her games with stronger opponents are more straightforward and clearly about who’s going to wear the pants in this “relationship”.

Amidst her recurrent references to sex and power in much of her dialogue, Typhoid regularly employs references to stock male porn fantasies about abusing women (temps and secretaries having sex with the boss, women who have to pay the plumber or the pizza delivery guy in services, strippers, etc.).

Likewise she enjoys dressing provocatively, wearing her current choice of oversexed “clothing” with an emphasis on leather and lingerie.

Typhoid’s game is essentially to club society back with something it handles very poorly — unfettered female sexuality, or at least the sexuality of one woman. The catch, though, is that Typhoid doesn’t handle her sexuality that well either and the game can backfire.

Though she will often deny it, Typhoid is aware that she’s very much sick and will be interested in possible cures – but of course any such cure would have to leave her in power, destroying the other personas and leaving her free.

As Mary

Mary is a poor lost lamb and little girl. She’s vulnerable, and part of her incredible acting talent comes from her pleasure in becoming someone else, especially somebody who is strong and/or has a life she can understand, unlike her own.

She also wishes she had a strong, reassuring man to take care of her and, again, lose herself in that relationship – but the predatory Typhoid automatically covets any man Mary is interested in, and wants him for herself.

Mary is highly empathic and a complete bleeding heart, and will always want to help people and not to hurt anyone. This is in fact the most likely cause behind Typhoid’s Uncertainty – Mary interfering, pleading and disrupting Typhoid so she doesn’t hurt somebody Mary feels a kinship toward, such as another person with severe ’multiple personality‘ issues, a complete innocent or somebody Mary loves.

Note that Mary does not normally remember having interfered with Typhoid or having witnessed her actions – it’s like a dream which, at best, will unravel and will disappear from her memory within seconds of ’awakening‘ in her Mary personality.

When not playing a role Mary is afraid, innocent and childlike – she’s genuinely scared by the big wide world that Typhoid loves so much and grabs by the balls, and needs to be protected by a strong male figure to relieve her anxiety.

She’s afraid of violence and of being alone, and likes all sort of fluffy things and cute animals (when she and Wolverine were raiding a secret lab and looking for secret documents, Mary was mostly concerned with freeing the various test animals and taking the nice bunnies and kitties home to save them). In several respects she seems to be stuck at age eight or nine in terms of emotional maturity.

Mary tends to fall in love with attractive and strong-looking men at the drop of a hat – whereas Typhoid absolutely wants to control and dominate men, Mary’s fondest wish is to be under the protection of a strong man and to be saved by a guy.

This is a common hook Typhoid will use to claw her way out – Typhoid will always be jealous and want to have the men Mary wants, giving her additional strength to reach the top ; and if Mary encounters difficulties in getting to know the guy she’s interested in, Typhoid will use this weakness and hesitation to try to seduce Mary by offering to “take care” of the situation.

On the other hand, feeling loved and protected by a good man will make Mary stronger and will let her durably stay on top.

As Bloody

Bloody is a fanatical man-hater and a dedicated killer. Whereas Typhoid sparkles with humour, games and often non-fatal cruelty, Bloody is businesslike, humourless and behaves likes a professional soldier in times of total war.

They are a bit alike in that they have an interest in power – but for Bloody it is a political gender issue and not a sexual one. While like Typhoid she will occasionally pretend to be a walking sex toy, for her this is undercover tactical work, usually intended to separate her target from his allies.

Bloody frames the phrase “war of the sexes” in the most literal way – for her it’s a shooting war and she’s in the trenches with her guns. She does not indiscriminately slaughter everything with a penis, though – most men are low-priority targets (unless they try to interfere) and the enemy soldiers are clearly those men who hurt women.

Bloody’s goal is one of justice and revenge against abuse, and the telekinetically-assembled armour she wears is also there so that no man will ever touch her again. Her behaviour is the most masculine of all the personalities, espousing a number of values traditionally desired in men such as strength, being unemotional, discipline, the ability to use weapons and not be intimidated by any form of violence, etc.

Bloody only has cold, bitter hatred and not much personality beyond that, making her robot-like. She seems to lack a sense of self when she’s not waging her war and/or when she can’t frame everything as a simplistic, total belief in the war of the sexes – not really knowing what to do under such circumstances and coming up with simple, immature reasoning.

In many ways she seems to deal with her trauma by being mechanical, machinelike, straightforward, terrifying and able to suppress any pain or fear. She will often say and do the exact same things from one comparable situation to the next.

As Walker

While the three other ones are largely defined by their relationship with men (Mary needs them and is helpless before them, Typhoid dominates them and uses them, Bloody hates and hurts them), Walker just doesn’t care – she’s basically asexual and feels no special tension, positive or negative, toward the other gender. Since she feels no specific need to be feminine and attractive, she’s vaguely butch.

Mary is a child abuse survivor (since she’s the sane one, it is likely that part of her past is real) and is determined to fight against child abuse as a militantly concerned citizen.

She’s not benign about it, though – while she’s not an out-and-out vigilante, if she has to use dirty tricks in the name of truth she will, and if a proven killer and abuser ends up being killed by Typhoid or Bloody while resisting, well, that’s too bad but nothing to cry about.

Walker enjoys being a PI and in particular going through all the literary and cinematic tropes associated with the profession – she does have an office with “Mary Walker, Private Investigator” marked over her windowed door, she does have a bottle of whiskey in her desk’s drawer, shady beautiful dames do come to consult her about delicate issues, she knows the streets and has her ways, she drinks a bit too much, etc.

She also usually wears a 1970s-style long coat vaguely reminiscent of Columbo’s, and unisex baggy clothing.

Interplay between the personas

The other woman – Mary and Typhoid

The relationship between Mary and Typhoid is the best-documented one, whereas the others are known in more general times.

While Mary is not aware of what is going on while Typhoid is, as Typhoid puts it, “on top”, she realises that there is somebody bad inside her who takes over and puts her away somewhat regularly.

She will realise her hair and body language are becoming that of the ’wild woman’ and that a weird fever is starting, and usually has a few seconds before she sinks under and Typhoid becomes dominant over the ’snivelling twit‘ (Typhoid hates Mary, and seems in some ways jealous of her).

Mary is far too meek to do anything about her condition or to put up any sort of resistance – besides Typhoid can psychically influence her from ’in there‘, even whilst she is not ’on top‘. Mary and Typhoid consider each other to be completely separate persons, as perhaps sisters who hate each other would.

Of course, due her lack of awareness while not dominant, Mary does not even know what Typhoid calls herself – she only knows her as ’that woman’.

She has sometimes found herself dressed and armed as Typhoid, without any idea of how she got there – a situation likely to induce panic, flight and crying, though Typhoid will influence her not to ditch her threads or blades until Mary is back home.

Typhoid seems able to take over Mary whenever she likes – but there were apparently long periods when she did not. Since this seems uncharacteristic of her not to mess with Mary’s life, it is likely there can be lengthy stretches where Typhoid cannot get on top for some reason.

Furthermore, Typhoid can be forced back down as another personality emerges, even if she doesn’t want to – there are examples of Mary becoming dominant right in the middle of a fight (and running away in a panic) because Typhoid rolled under her Psychological Instability (note the higher than normal roll-under trigger for the PI).

Whilst the Psychological Instability is set at Catastrophic, the GM should feel free to let the personality shift persist as long as is appropriate – basically, ignore the normal length of a CPI episode and let the new personalities be dominant until another switch takes place.

Logistics of the Mary/Typhoid changes

In the basic stats block, having another personality take over Typhoid is treated as a CPI for simplicity’s sake, and translates as a sudden switch.

A fuller treatment would have the two personalities engaging in psychic combat whenever some trigger conditions are reached, but… the character is already complex enough to handle. Besides, the various personalities seem to be roughly of equal strength, making the outcome essentially random.

Uncertainty denotes a more subtle effect – Mary interfering with Typhoid and trying to stay her hand, but being pushed back by Typhoid (see the Personality sections for more). Note that they gain HPs independently – if you decide to go for full psychic combat and Mary goes through some good Subplots whilst Typhoid is not making enough headways, Mary is going to gain the upper hand more often — and vice versa.

It is entirely possible, even common, for her to ’flicker‘ rapidly from one personality to another, with her body language, voice and facial expression switching from one persona to the next as they struggle for dominance and take turns being ’on top‘.

Typhoid occasionally does the rapid-fire shifting thing to bully and taunt Mary, though this is mostly useful to let off steam or gloat, since Mary is not aware of Typhoid’s rantings when Typhoid is on top.

She has also used rapid-shifting to confuse and taunt opponents who were willing to strike her but not Mary – which is actually fairly common, since she’s likely to approach males as Mary and have them fall in love with her.

When doing rapid-fire switching Typhoid is not weakened (that is, it does not improve Mary’s chances to come ’on top‘), and Mary does not seem to remember what happened during the series of short moments where she was the visible personality.

The shift will be nearly automatic when Mary is being physically threatened, since she cannot hope to fight back and will “faint” into becoming Typhoid. Interestingly, it would seem the the shift to Mary is also automatic if she is in a clearly “Mary-friendly” situation (such as being held and kissed by Matt Murdock), just like being a “Typhoid-friendly” situation involving violence triggers the reverse shift.

If the violence threatening Mary is of a misogynistic nature, it is likely that she will “faint” into becoming Bloody.

Which is bad.

Four personas

Typhoid is jealous of Mary’s romantic life, and takes pleasure in bullying her and wrecking her life. She can use Hypnosis to program Mary, but cannot mentally influence Bloody or Walker. She seems to have a neutral attitude toward Bloody, and will occasionally deal with her to peacefully take turns in being on top.

Bloody will honour those deals and this relationship generally works out (hence the Connection). Typhoid clearly knows what Mary and Bloody see and do, but it is possible that she blacks out when Walker is dominant.

For the longest time, Mary was not genuinely aware of the other personalities, except in the vaguest of terms. She cannot influence anybody but can fight her way to the top when needed.

This implies that Mary is subconsciously aware of what Typhoid (and possibly Bloody and Walker) do, since she will fight for dominance when somebody she loves is being threatened by another personality, but does not remember doing so nor the events that led to it. She is terrified of Typhoid and Bloody.

As the Typhoid series starts, Mary is obviously aware of the existence and personality of Walker – in fact she trusts Walker enough to “summon” her and let her be in charge if something decisive has to be done.

Bloody protects the other three since they are women, but despises them all. To her Mary is a weak and submissive victim who has to be liberated, and Typhoid is a slut who flaunts her sexuality in inadmissible ways that actually reinforce patriarchal power.

She can fairly directly influence Mary from ’in there‘ and the flow of consciousness seemed uninterrupted when she switched back and forth with Typhoid. It is possible that she blacks out when Walker is dominant.

The saner one

Walker is aware of everything – in fact she stated she was the only one aware of all the others, which hints at Bloody and Typhoid being inert or at least sluggish whenever Walker is fully in control.

However, it would seem that the memories soon become fuzzy and very general, since she has to pass notes from one personality to the next to communicate precise information, and she often has to struggle to vaguely remember something one of the others did.

She actively tries to keep the others from power, takes her meds, etc. which forces the other personalities to work at the fringes when Walker is in control – using slips of the mind, mistakes and moments when Walker is drunk, dozing off, etc. This is usually limited to Bloody and Typhoid managing to have Walker carry their stuff (especially the weapons) when she packs her luggage.

Walker wants to keep Typhoid and Bloody suppressed, and largely considers Mary to be a sick, easily influenced and irresponsible child. She will let the other personalities have “time off”, though, and have them work as her agents as noted below ; she will also let Mary emerge from time to time, chiefly to produce art, since she’s harmless and is likely to “call” Walker if she gets into trouble.

Walker tells her neighbours that the ’other girls’ are roommates.

Walker seems to be able to use Typhoid and Mary as agents – this is represented by her being the Connections. Apparently Walker can reliably resume control when one of the other personality has done the job Walker had them do, and except perhaps for the violently psychotic Bloody they will generally behave when “on the job”, as if working for an employer they actually respect.

Walker often sends Mary in with a specific character for her to play, since otherwise she might be quite useless.

Note that precedents in the Marvel Universe around people with comic book MPD imply that knocking out one personality through Mental effects will leave the other unaffected.

Quotes — Typhoid

Typhoid – the lust, the poison and the fire
“I’ve got a fever.”

(Having sex in a burning room full of dead men as the police arrives) “Let the dead watch. Come on. I’m gonna take you, and then I’m gonna take New York… This whole hot town is mine.”

(Thinking) “Sleep.” (Two heavies fall asleep) “Funny. That usually only works on cows.”

The Kingpin: “Can you make any man fall in love with you ?”
Typhoid: “Hahahahahahaha.” (Beat) “Child’s play.”

(To Daredevil) “And you, good Christian soldier ? Your way is better ? Helping scum, by forgiving them the unforgivable ? Giving them a second chance in that waste system called the courts ? Justice just recycles garbage. Look at it this way. If I’m so evil… perhaps I just exist to make you look good… Come on, you love. This is like a priest getting a chance to converse with the Devil — I’m too excited to resist […] Come on, kiss me…” (kisses the feverish and confused Daredevil as random garbage around them catches fire).

“The gears in my head just click in place like a machine that existed before I was born. A code planted in my genes and I have no choice but to… Just as a finger slips into a trigger like it was made for it… The spark of the charge thrills me to the bone… And when the light goes out in their eyes… it sends a kick down my spine. Death smells like birth to me. And once you’re marked, you’re marked. The stigmata of first blood. Every time I see someone die. I know they are dying, but it feels like I’m the one dying.”

(Sensually stroking the face of the statue of an angel) “Mmmmm. I love the cool hard stone of statues. I love their indifference. This one’s got a beautiful face — looks a bit like Daredevil, my merry Christian. My big angel.” (decapitates the statue with a jumping side kick) “Let’s go to work.”

“You know, Mr. Kingpin. You told me Murdock was so moral. Well, I’m finding him as willing to cheat as any guy.”

(Triumphantly taking over Mary) “You should see some of the things you’ve done ! You’ve loved hundreds of men and murdered twice that number ! Go on — crawl away and hide in the dark cowardly corners of my mind ! Shut up, behave, submit ! This body is mine now ! I’ll use it any way I want ! I’ll do things with it that would make you sick ! Make you shudder ! You wretched twit ! Look at this silly home filled with fluffy pillows !” (proceeds to wreck Mary’s apartment)

“Mary’s a wimp. I can bully her away anytime I want.”

(After making love with the Kingpin): “I’ve seen that look. He think that he’s tamed me. Broken the wild horse. He thinks he owns me now. They always get that look. I know it so well. While the fire burns they can never see too clearly. But when the smoke clears… he will know who owns who.”

(Intimidating some Mafia soldatos) “’Soldiers’ — isn’t that cute ! Boys do love playing soldier, don’t they ?” (opening a crate full of packets of cocaine) “And what have we here ? A little snow for an Arctic mission ?” (mentally sets the coke on fire)

“Sanity ? Sanity is a straightjacket ! It’s a trick ! LOOK AT YOU ! I HATE YOU !”

(Muttering to herself) “Good girl. Take your pill. A pill a day keeps the demons away…”

(Mentally setting Wolverine on fire) “Tsk, tsk, tsk… Big bad renegade wildman like you… You with all your experience… Didn’t you ever listen to your mother ? She must have told you — never trust a woman.”

(Messing with Ghost Rider’s head as he hallucinates) “Don’t ever doubt. You are a good man. The best of men. Every time you sear someone’s soul with your penance stare, your hellfire of truth — just because they scream, just because their agony is so visceral, as if you curdle their blood and strip skin off their soul… never doubt what a good man you are. It’s a good thing you do. A righteous thing. Don’t struggle. Don’t resist. Good men taste good. Good men make me so hungry.”

(Screaming at Mary from the inside) “It’s called *desire*, little fool. You feel desire. Can’t handle it, can you, princess ? Well, if one part of you can’t handle something — there’s usually a hidden part of you that will. […] The big sexy man stirred your innocent little juices ? Hmmmm. Come on, you. I didn’t spit out all those pills and get us the heck out of that asylum to let the pathetic Mary lead a boring, nothing little life. We want some fun. Now let me out – it’s my turn ! There’s a man I want ! Hahahaahah !”

(Taking over Mary and using Hypnosis on her) “Hello, baby. Now there’s an itty bitty pretty little something I want you to do for us…”

(To the Ghost Rider) “Oh, that *penetrating* stare of yours… oh, it hurt me, hurt me so bad… I could almost love you for that…”

“Oh… I was… I think I was painting. There’s paint on my hands, anyway… I guess that’s what I was doing.”

“Oh, I love Bonnie and Clyde ! They’re so sweet. I’ve never seen the end — I always turn it off right before… you know…”

Quotes — Bloody

Bloody Mary – the mechanical hatred and the war
“You’re safe with me, Jessie. I am Bloody Mary and I’m gonna let a red river flow till I exterminate the entire male race. The patriarchs deserve nothing less than genocide. But don’t worry, sweetie. Look around, see ? I let all the females live.”

(Telekinetically assembling heavy armour from a dumpster full of pieces of metal) “If we steel ourselves with as much armour as possible… they can’t touch us.”

Wolverine: “Where is Mary ?”
Bloody: “Her ? She’s so pathetic. Mary thought every devil was a Prince Charming. Pure submissive conformity. She had to go !”
Wolverine: “Where’s Typhoid ?”
Bloody: “Typhoid ? She exploited herself ! Look how she bought right into the image needed by men and sold herself out ! She was repulsive — a victim and she didn’t even know it ! She had to go !”

(Lining up a shot to kill a suspected abuser) “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick… Jump right over the candlestick… Eye for an eye. Bruise by bruise.”

“You got a wife, buddy ? A girl ? How do you treat her, huh ? Is she home waiting for you while you prove your manhood in stupid ways in a stupid suit ?”

Quotes — Walker

Walker, the detective
“My name is Walker. When I was a little girl… I was abused. I made myself become four different women. Two of those are very dangerous. One is… lost. And now I am the fourth one. The only one who knows everything. I must be locked up and monitored.”

“My name is Mary Walker. I’m a private investigator. I’d like to come to the city, and find out what’s going on, find the killer. Would you talk to me ?”

“I found myself half-dressed as Bloody Mary earlier. And Mary slipped out and made a phone call. Typhoid’s fishnets are packed in my knapsack. That’s a lot of bad signs… I can’t lose control… not know. ”

“I feel like I did this once before… did I already follow a trick ? Oh, God — did one of the others ?” (half-remembers, half-deduces what Bloody has done) “If the killings don’t stop, then she’s got the wrong man… but… he was bad too, he deserved it… didn’t he ?”

“So they let me out of the asylum and I became a detective – four sleuths rolled into one. Too bad they all cheat and lie to each other…”

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Control can be used to induce clearly suicidal actions (+2 or +0 dep. on house rules) and is its own AV

Fog is Contingent on Telekinesis, requires an Automatic Action each Phase to be active, and requires numerous small objects of opportunity for her to levitate (usually a mixture of nearby thrash and debris if she uses this ability in the typical poorly-cleaned street – some might be on fire)

Hypnotism is its own AV (+0 or +1 depending on house rules), but it can only be used on unsuspecting targets (-2) and to do small, innocuous, immediate things they have no objection toward (examples include “sit with me”, “look at me”) (-3)

Obscure does not work against the usual suite of Powers – instead it works against enhanced normal senses (Analytical smell/tracing scent, Directional Hearing, Extended hearing, Super hearing, etc.) and some super-senses (such as Daredevil’s Sonar and Spider-Man’s Danger Sense)

Sleep is Contingent on Hypnotism

Telekinesis can lift a number of small objects (up to a total weight of 0 APs), but they will collectively have an AV and EV of zero (though she can play around that – for instance suspend a mass over somebody then let it drop, at which point it is treated as a normal fall)

Advantages:
Alter-Ego (Involuntary – the other three personalities), Attractive, Iron Nerves, Lightning Reflexes, Schtick (Psy-Ops (Minor Marginal, see below)), Misc.: Typhoid can use her Hypnotism on Mary even when Mary is the active persona, though she takes a +2CS OV/RV penalty on every roll ; she can also use her Hypnotism on other persons at full power even when the Mary persona is active and the Typhoid persona is not. For a while she had Medium Credentials within the Kingpin’s mobs.

Fever rising

Initially, Typhoid’s Pyrotechnics is but a 01 – she can set flammables alight, or create a small flame on a hard surface (such as hardwood), or maybe set some pieces of clothing on fire.

After she is taken down by Daredevil and escapes from the psychiatric hospital, she demonstrates increasingly greater power in that area – and often maxes her EV with HPs. This allows her to actually set people on fire with her raw anger, seriously damaging even Wolverine.

Likewise her initial Telekinesis score was 00 APs — but when she clashes with Spider-Man (and after Bloody Mary has appeared) she lifts considerably heavier weights with her mind, and moves objects with much greater force. Her APs seem to have gradually increased, since by the time she confronts Power Back she levitates herself for the first documented time, and obviously has done it before.

It seems that the Telekinesis power level is tied to the Bloody persona — Typhoid had reached 04 APs when Bloody first emerged, and reached 06 when Bloody came back.

Sultry as sin

Typhoid’s Charisma (Intimidation) is not usually performed by verbal threats. Rather she starts seducing and confusing her opponent by viciously clawing at their psychological red buttons and using her raw sex appeal and power over men – including her Hypnotism Power.

The “good Christian soldier” quote above is an example of Typhoid using her wiles on Daredevil – who just stood there like an idiot (in part because Typhoid is hard for him to sense and thus confusing, in part due to his guilt due to the recent near-seduction by Mary) until he was sweating on the ground with Typhoid riding on top of him and everything catching fire around them.

Given this approach, Typhoid gets to use her Attractive Advantage for this type of Character Interaction, and will likely be able to bring some CSes of bonus to bear if she knows about vulnerabilities of the character (such Daredevil’s guilt over almost cheating on Karen) – such adjustments are, again, best made by the GMs.

This is the weeping song

Typhoid has an ability similar to the Psy-Ops Schtick (originally developed for a Batman villain, Zeiss). While the game effects are somewhat similar, though, the in-story effects are different.

Whereas Zeiss will force his opponents to make mistakes, lose their concentration, fight angrily and irrationally, etc. the fights against Typhoid will be emotionally draining and harrowing, and her opponents will be reluctant to use maximum force against her. If Typhoid got her emotional claws into her opponent, any violence that follows will be hell for him.

Unlike Zeiss, Typhoid must pay a Minor Marginal fee to use her Psy-Ops Schtick – she uses it only for major campaigns of emotional demolition, not as a doctrine of engagement as Zeiss does. It will also be limited to persons who have developped a romantic and/or sexual interest in her.

When destabilizing an opponent, Typhoid pits her INF/WIL against the INT/SPI of his opponents. Each relevant MIA or MIH she notices through observation add +1 to the roll (added to the final roll like the Dart Bonus), each Serious thing a +2, each Catastrophic a +4.

Using her opponent’s Motivation against him is good for a -1CS drop of the opponent’s OV. ”Relevant” means IAs or IHs that relate to Typhoid’s modus operandi and style.

Weaknesses and Motivations have to be identified through roleplaying, and only count if they can be used in some way by Typhoid against her opponent.

Several attempt at destabilization are possible, with RAPs being cumulative. However, for each attempt past the second, the target’s OV increase by a cumulative 2 CS.

The results gained by the RAPs are as follows :

One RAP

Opponent operates one Genre lower for the first Phase of the fight

½ RAPs

Opponent operates one Genre lower for the first five Phases of the fight

Full RAPs

Opponent operates one Genre lower for the whole fight, and two Genres lower for the first two Phases of the fight.

Advantages:
Alter-Ego (Involuntary – the other three personalities), Attractive, Familiarity (special needs education), Misc.: Mary reads as a negative to all tests for superhuman abilities, even state-of-the-art ones.

Connections:
She has a Low Connection with both Wolverine and Daredevil, but do not know how to contact them

Drawbacks:
SPR (epileptic seizures, plus some minor health issues), MIF of violence, Uncertainty, CPI (another personality taking over – roll-under threshold is 6), Creepy Appearance (exceptionally attractive – which doesn’t giver her any bonus to Intimidation), Misc.: Mary is not normally aware of her other personalities, though she knows there is “somebody bad inside [her]”.

Seduction of the innocent

Typhoid has genuine power over heterosexual men – she easily seduced Matt Murdock within less than 30 minutes of contact. And this was despite Murdock’s very high mental and mystical resiliency, despite his deeply-held religious and moral beliefs and despite his love for his then-girlfriend Karen Page !

Her most effective way to do this is to let Mary do the acting work, while she uses her Hypnotism both to ’coach‘ Mary (who is not typically aware of Typhoid’s presence) and to influence the target.

Mary will use both her high INF and AUR (boosted by her Attractive Advantage) and her Actress Skill ; the later is used to put her in character for the role Typhoid wants her to play.

This character will leverage weak points in the personality of the target (such as Murdock’s admiration for a gifted educator of blind children) ; the GM should decide the difficulty of playing this role for the Actress roll (it’s rarely above 4/4 – professional acting job level).

By how many CSes (if any) the chosen role will lower the defences of the target is also best left at the GM’s discretion – it depends on which buttons Typhoid pushes, and how deeply they affect the target. A rule of thumb could be one CS per IA level (e.g., -1CS OV/RV for a MIA Typhoid manages to exploit), but “normal” personality traits could also easily earn multiple CS.

In Murdock’s case that the character respectfully and professionally helped the blind was likely good for one CS, and the devoted, empathic, missionary, selfless personality in the combination with the first trait likely earned a second.

Once Mary starts landing RAPs, the victim is considered to be ’unsuspecting‘ and to have ’no objections toward‘ being seduced by her. In other words – Typhoid can start using her Hypnotism on the targets to induce behaviour the victim would never otherwise consider, such as cheating on an existing girlfriend or spouse. Note that, in this special case, Typhoid can use her Attractive Advantage for her Hypnotism !

Once the victim is hooked, he’s in love with Mary ; at this point you get forget the dice and handle the situation as a role-playing one.

BODY ARMOUR [BODY 04, EV 03 (05 w/STR, 09 w/Martial Artist), Skin armour: 01, Limitation: Skin armour only vs. blades and bullets]. The ARMOUR is assembled from nearby loose material within one or two Phases through telekinesis, and some of the pieces are likely held in place telekinetically.She will prefer various pieces of metal (especially to assemble a sort of clawed gauntlet, with big sharp bits jutting from the back of her hand) but if none are available she has proven able to assemble “armour” from random office supplies. Note that is Bloody has access to enough hard scrap metal she can telekinetically assemble something resembling FULL PLATE ARMOUR [BODY 05, Claws: 05, Skin armour: 02, Limitation: Skin Armour is halved against attacks other than blades and bullets] – at one point she does so with dozens of big knives found in a large kitchen.

Bloody will procure weapons – especially guns – as soon as possible, and will always go for the maximum practical amount of firepower, preferring light machineguns or at least an assault rifle. She uses her considerable physical strength, Schtick and telekinesis to accurately fire those with but one hand.

She also seems to have a sniper rifle when her vigilante activities call for it — [BODY 01, Projectile weapon: 06, Range: 08, Telescopic vision: 04, Ammo: 06, R#02. Limitation: Projectile weapon has No Range – use the Range given next instead]

Blood occasionally uses a full-size Bowie knife

War – what is it good for ?

Bloody is markedly tougher, stronger and harder in a fight than even Typhoid, and was a credible threat against Spider-Man, even ignoring some of his blows (though of course Spidey was pulling his punches).

Though she seems to be the personality most associated with Telekinesis, she can still use Typhoid’s pyrokinesis – though she does not use it as often as Typhoid does. Bloody does not just give orders to inanimate objects to have them fly around ; she can also order herself not to feel any pain (Pain Management Schtick and her small Immunities).

Walker

Dex: 03

Str: 02

Bod: 03

Motivation: Justice/Responsibility

Int: 04

Wil: 05

Min: 05

Occupation: Private Eye

Inf: 04

Aur: 05

Spi: 05

Resources {or Wealth}: 005

Init: 011

HP: 020

Powers:
Invisibility: 02

Bonuses and Limitations:
Invisibility only vs. human beings she can see – she can cloud people’s mind like the Shadow does

Mementos

Walker can use some of the other personalities (chiefly Mary and Typhoid) as agents of sorts, letting them take over to conduct specific work for which they are well-suited – she often has Mary playing a character to do social engineering, Typhoid acts as an enforcer and Bloody could be used as a soldier.

Whilst Walker is aware of what the others do, the memories are fuzzy and liquid, and she largely relies on notes to communicate with herself.

Thus, one wall of Walker’s apartment is covered with Post-It™ notes and the like, and is used by the other personalities to ’report‘ after a ’mission’ on the current investigations. Such notes can occasionally be slightly cryptic — the other personalities are, after all, insane, and even Walker is not well — but Walker generally manages to make it work.

By Sébastien Andrivet

Source of Character: Marvel Universe (chiefly Daredevil comics), character created and chiefly written by Ann Nocenti